


We'll Walk From This Dark Room

by geckoholic



Series: author's favorites [19]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 21:08:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5680843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/pseuds/geckoholic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Annie and Peeta are lost during the mission to rescue the victors; only Johanna survives. Together, her and Katniss and Finnick have to figure out how to keep living after the revolution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We'll Walk From This Dark Room

**Author's Note:**

  * For [navaan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/gifts).



> For the prompt, _what if Peeta and Annie had never been recovered?_ Angsty puppy with a penchant for character death that I am, I pounced. ;D So the warning is for their deaths, just to be clear.
> 
> Beta-read by amorremanet. Thank you! ♥ All remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> Title is from "Open Your Eyes" by Snow Patrol.

Johanna wasn't around for their deaths, knocked out clean as some resistance soldier carried her to safety. But she saw them on the reels the rebels aired all over the place, after. She considers the Capitol killing them one of the final gasps of a dying dragon, dragging down everything within its reach, tearing at it with bloody claws. Lethal injections, delivered by the guards as soon as the security breach was reported. The only reason Johanna survived is that her room was the first past the door, her guard just a little bit slower to react than all the others. Pure chance; she's reluctant to call it luck. 

On their way to District Thirteen, the soldiers send her odd looks. She's told Katniss demanded the rescue mission for all the remaining victors, but she also knows she isn't the one they really wanted: the other star-crossed lover, the chink in the Mockingjay's armor, the pressure point they can use to break her. The soldiers look at Johanna like she should should feel sorry for being the sole survivor. But she's not. She never did apologize for much, and being alive sure isn't on that list. 

 

*** 

 

With Peeta and Annie lost, Thirteen’s revolution stands on shaky legs. If they cannot manage to save a handful of people from an underground prison, how are they supposed to save everyone else?

The only thing that drives them, afterwards, is the sheer force of Katniss’ anger. It shines bright and strong, contagious enough to tear Finnick from his stupor as well. They spearhead the attack on the Capitol together, while Johanna looks on from her room in the infirmary, willing her body to either heal faster or give in altogether.

Finnick visits her sometimes, gives her updates on the missions launched and battles won. He doesn’t leave out the losses either, honest in a way that both hurts and makes her feel treated like a whole person. No sugarcoating for the tortured captive, not from him. It only makes this worse, fuels the resentment at how slowly the tortured, undernourished flesh around her knits itself back together. 

The sidelines aren't her place. 

 

***

 

They win, if by a hair's breadth. The explosion in the Capitol's square means she's got company in the infirmary, her fellow victors occupying the beds on her left and her right. Inexplicable pride surges through her as she watches them both sleep at night – Katniss is practically a stranger who happens to have shared some of Johanna’s experiences and Finnick, well, whatever happened between them took place in the early years after their victories and if he ever was hers he stopped being that a long time ago – but Johanna doesn't fight it. She lets it wash over her, lets it make her feel like the pain they all went through is worth something. 

This brave new world is full of survivors, and most of them are, at this very moment, celebrating the victory over the Capitol. Which is ironic, probably, because the three of them, in here, are among the few people who learned the hard way that being victorious isn't always a good thing. It’s a gift with thorns and venom, and it almost always comes at too high a cost. 

 

***

 

She doesn't find out about Prim until a few days later. Johanna used to have sisters, small brittle things that broke too easily. While she hardly remembers them — while she made herself forget — she remembers how much mourning them _hurt_. 

When Katniss wakes, she doesn't talk, doesn't weep or wail. Other people float in and out, assessing when their precious Mockingjay will be able to fly her lap of honor, and all she does is turn her head and pretend to be asleep. When they leave, Johanna takes her IV stand and her thermal blanket and a small three-legged stool. She sits next to Katniss's bed and takes her hand.

Katniss still doesn't say anything, but she doesn't turn the other way either. 

 

*** 

 

From the moment he wakes, all Finnick cares about is Katniss. He's projecting, Johanna assumes – after all, Katniss is the only person still alive for him to protect and fuss over. And Johanna’s glad for him doing so, because the same instinct has risen in her, but she unlearned caring for anyone so thoroughly that she doesn’t know what to do with this concern now that it's flickering back to life. 

So, Johanna watches, and she waits, and she yells at anyone who dares to intrude or impose on their little circle of three. This part, she's good at — biting people away. President Coin herself shows up at one point, in the mistaken belief that she's got any kind of sway with them, and Johanna screams at her until her throat is raw and and her voice little more than a croak. 

They're left in peace, after that, and soon after, they’re released. No reason to keep them close if there aren’t any glorious propaganda shots to be had, Johanna assumes. They're given the choice to each to back to their each District or pick one together, and even though they've never discussed that, never so much as thought about it, all they have to do is share a glance between the three of them to decide they're not going to separate. 

Katniss declares that both Finnick and Johanna are coming with her, not a request but an order. A couple days later the three of them, Katniss's mother, and that stupid cat, are delivered to the scorched patch of earth that used to be District Twelve. 

 

***

 

The only houses in all of Twelve still standing are in the Victor's Village. Johanna doesn't know whether that was intentional, during the bombing, to leave the cages the Capitol had built for its victors intact, but there’s no point in poring over that question. It is how it is.

They pick a house at the far end of the village, with as much distance from the houses where Prim and Peeta had lived as they can possibly get. The three of them move in together while Mrs. Everdeen takes up residence in the house next door. That arrangement doesn't need to be discussed, either. 

But the dead are not forgotten, or ignored. Katniss and her mother take turns in putting up candles in the windows of their old house, and the Mellarks', in remembrance, or penance, or maybe both. 

 

***

Johanna had still been a child the last time she shared the roof over her head with anyone. Considering that, she has surprisingly little trouble adjusting. There's a comfort to be found in the noise of someone else shuffling to the bathroom late at night when she's lying awake herself, or moving about in the kitchen while she's reading in the living room, or talking softly in hushed voices as they make breakfast and think she’s still asleep. 

They grow into a unit, more than they have before, this time bound by choice and free will rather than necessity and shared trauma. The word _love_ was struck from Johanna's vocabulary a long time ago, but it's something like that, growing between them now. 

 

***

 

It seems fitting that Katniss would be the first to initiate the step from platonic roommates to... more. What Johanna wasn't prepared for is that it's her, not Finnick, who Katniss visits first. 

She pads into Johanna's room in the middle of the night, pulls the sheet aside like they've done this many times before, and curls into the crook of Johanna's neck. After a few moments, probably waiting to see if Johanna will protest, she cranes her head up and presses her lips to Johanna's, sure and purposeful and not the least bit tentative. Out of the three of them, she's always been the bravest; not unafraid, but also not willing to stop living despite her fears. 

That night, her mouth sealed to Katniss's while she's coming apart on her fingers, Johanna finally remembers what it feels like to be alive. 

 

***

 

Finnick is a little slower to shift, a little more reluctant. Possibly, a little more heartbroken. There's another thought Johanna tries to stifle whenever it arises, one that's related to how tainted physical intimacy must be for him, the most _popular_ victor the Capitol has ever seen. 

When he finally jumps in, it's with a vengeance and a flourish, encircled by both of them, a tangle of heated skin and bated breath and whispered promises that's so final, so seemingly indestructible, that Johanna loses track of the lines between them, forgets where either of them ends and the others begin. 

There's a twinge of residual fear, brought on by the shadow of all the losses shared between them and the monster that's been breathing down her own neck ever since she stepped out of the arena. But it's brief, fleeting, and gone before she even has a chance go consciously chase it away. 

 

***

 

In honor of her sister, Katniss takes to helping out in the hospital that carries her sister's name, _Primrose Medical Center_ , complete with a little drawing of the flower in its logo. Because they don't have anything else to do, and because, even though Johanna wouldn't admit it under fear of death, not being together feels wrong, she and Finnick join her. 

Turns out, all three of them aren't too shabby at medical work. Nothing complicated — none of them will ever be surgeons or head physicians or the like. But setting broken bones and stitching cuts and holding someone’s hair back while they retch? Under Mrs. Everdeen’s tutelage, they can do that much.

It doesn't quite make sense to Johanna – hands that have been drenched in as much blood as theirs shouldn't be this good preserving life anymore – but it makes her happy. 

 

***

 

A few months after they first moved to District Twelve, right around the time they the Games would have been held, they travel to District Four together. It was Finnick's idea, the first request he made since they came here. He asks whether Johanna wants to visit her home as well, but she does not, and so they don't. 

The trains that used to transport tributes from and victors to the districts are now used for public transportation, and while they discuss using the Mockingjay's influence to request air transport, in the end, they do settle for the journey by train. They're all wary about it, but it's also an exorcism of sorts, a new memory painted over old and bitter ones. They sit with other passengers in a large compartment that's filled with chatter and laughter and the sounds of children playing instead of dreadful silence. They eat in a food wagon that serves cheap, quickly made meals — fried potatoes and sausages, rather than Capitol cuisine. 

Once they arrive in Four, Finnick goes to the beach alone. Johanna suspects it's a goodbye of sorts, the burial of a ghost instead of a flesh and bone body. They watch him from a few yards away as he paces through the sand by himself, kicking up clouds of dirt, as he strips down and walks into the waves until they're up to his hips, then jumps in and swims out far enough that he's all but a small figure against an orange evening sky.

Johanna doesn't worry that he won't come back to them. He does, after taking the time he needs. 

When he returns, it's to usher them both into water alongside him, splashing and teasing, and it feels like an invitation to another part of his soul, another wall shattered, another burden lifted from all of their shoulders. 

 

*** 

 

Ever so slowly, District Twelve fills with other people. The rubble was cleared out months ago. Johanna has no idea where they disposed of the charred bodies, and she doesn't want to know. But still, no new homes are built.

One day, someone knocks on their door, an elderly women with kind eyes that reminds her of Mags, makes her ache in Finnick's stead. She asks whether the other houses in the Victors Village are free to be moved into. Katniss steps forward, takes her hand, slowly nods, and confirms that they are. 

That's how they end up with other people’s children playing on their front yard and neighbors who wave when they walk past, another puzzle piece on their way to something in the vague vicinity of normal. As _normal_ as either of them wants to be, anyway. What matters, when they sit together in the evenings, take turns telling stories from their districts, or talk about rumors from the amorous lives of their new neighbors, is that they know they're safe and together, and that the nightmares they take turns waking from are a thing of the past.


End file.
